This presentation covers the journey that the Victorian State Emergency Service (VICSES) has undertaken as part of the Fire Services Reform agenda to identify, understand and define where inherent risk management ends and emergency risk management begins in the context of a disaster.

Regardless of how emergency risk is defined, the focus for effective emergency risk management must be to reduce or lessen a risk’s impact – should it eventuate, or reduce the probability of the manifestation of that risk occurring – should that be an option.

An effective emergency risk management framework therefore relies on the fact that actions taken to reduce inherent risk need to be known and understood at the time assessments of the potential impacts of emergency risk are conducted. In the case of a natural-hazard risk, whilst there may be no action that will necessarily reduce the probability of an event occurring, there may be opportunities to lessen the consequences on a community should an emergency event occur.

During the course of this project VICSES carefully examined the inherent and residual risks associated with a hazard (natural or other), hazard impacts and consequences, community disaster resilience and the dynamics of changing risk profiles.

The lessons learned from the journey are now being used to inform the way the VICSES communicates with communities about their risk profile and the consequences for a community if an event occurs that manifests an identified risk. This in turn allows municipalities and communities to plan for the management of those risks and their consequences.